Beaumont council and administration made strides to grow and communicate with the community last year. At the mayor’s annual address on April 7, mayor Camille Bérubé said the council has moved forward and completed many projects that have and will continue to have a lasting impact on the community.

The town completed a number of projects, including opening the Centre Communautaire Beaumont Community Centre, restoring the former landfill, upgrading stormwater drainage ponds, the successful annexation, and the for Aqua-Fit Phase Two among other projects.

At the address, Leduc-Beaumont MLA and Municipal Affairs Minister Shaye Anderson announced that Beaumont would receive a matching $150,000 from the Community and Regional Economic Support (CARES) program. This grant money will be used to develop a centre-ville marketing and destination strategy to help bring more businesses into the community, Bérubé said.

In terms of commercial development, Bérubé said in 2016, the community saw more than $85 million invested in a number of projects.

“There’s been a lot of commercial projects that have been approved or are underway, so there are approximately over 100,000 sq feet of commercial and office space that is going to be available in Beaumont. Some is under construction at this time and some is slated to start,” Bérubé said over the phone. “There was over $85 million invested in Beaumont from all of the construction that took place in Beaumont over the last year.”

And the current mayor expects that trend to continue.

“Now there are more options available. The annexation has definitely spurred a lot of interest in the land around Beaumont and it has also spurred interest in what Beaumont is doing,” he said.

“From what I hear from economists … even though several of them are mildly optimistic, there is definitely a lot more optimism in what’s going on in this region than what has been in the last several years.”

On the communications side, council and administration in 2016 put on 20 open houses for various projects, posted six surveys, built the electronic signage on the north end of Beaumont, and began to build a larger social media presence by working with new platforms. Beaumont also took part in the Shaw TV program “Where you Live,” which has more than 8,000 views and continues to grow.

Bérubé said this is part of a push to ensure that all residents have an opportunity to have their voices heard.

“Over the course of the years, we’ve spent an incredible amount of time dealing with communications. To this day, people still don’t feel that they have the information to provide feedback, so we’ve introduced all of these vehicles, and so if people want to find out the information, if they want to get involved and provide their feedback, there have certainly been more and more opportunities,” he said.

The mayor said part of the success the community saw in 2016 is due to the current council. Over the last four years, the team has been working diligently to complete a lot of the successful projects and planning for the future.

“Looking over the last four years, this council has been extremely busy. There has been lots of work that has been done in meeting the needs of the community, but also planning going forward, because the decision we make today about a facility, about a road, about a park, about a school, is here with us for a long time,” Bérubé said.

“This council has an incredible amount of work to look at the long term. All the various plans and all of the changes to bylaw, etc, is very time consuming and a lot of work has been done. So I think we’ve fared very well for that.”

For the next council, Bérubé said the biggest challenge will be balancing the community needs. With a fast growing community comes a lot of challenges, including the need for new services and facilities.

“Ultimately there’s a need to find balance with the wants of the community and the resources that are available. If the sky was the limit as far as dollars would go, the wish list would be very easy to accomplish, but when you sit on the other side of the desk you need to find a way to balance what the community has to do and what the community may want going forward,” he said.

“With the new election, there is also people that could have a steep learning curve as far as their responsibilities.”

At the end of the address the mayor announced that he would not be running in the October election.